Africa Youth Month 2022

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The Africa Youth Month (AYM) 2022, a month-long campaign to celebrate Africa Youth Day 2022 recognized as one of the African Union (AU) holidays, aims to engage African wikimedia youth and the entire African Wikimedia community in activities that will contribute to content related to this year's Africa Youth Day theme "Breaking the Barriers to Meaningful Youth Participation and Inclusion in Advocacy".

Africa is considered the world's youngest population with more than 400 million youth aged between the ages of 15 to 35 years. This also manifests in African Wikimedia communities where about 80% of the community population is young people under the age of 35 specifically in Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Botswana, Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, South Sudan, Zambia, and Somali. Hence, leaders and communities in Africa recognise young people as the backbone of the Wikimedia movement in the region.

Given these numbers and representation, it becomes important and glaring on how young african wikimedians, working together with support from partners and larger wikimedia community have the potential to increase coverage of African-related topics on Wikimedia projects. The objective of this year's Africa Youth Day is to bring attention to the tremendous community change that happens when african wikimedia youth are given the right support and resources and how this could lead to increased participation in advocacy for open knowledge.

The theme of this year's Africa Youth Day is an open call to African youth to join and participate in advocacy. With the theme of the campaign in mind, we will focus on:

• youth activists/advocates in education, employment, entrepreneurship, engagement and health sectors;
• programs, or projects they have initiated as part of their advocacy journey in relation to their area of focus;
• programs created by the government and private sector to engage youth population in the areas of Education, Employment, Engagement, Entrepreneurship and Health;
• youth organizations and movements that are involved in advocacy in education, employment, entrepreneurship and health;
• challenges (health and otherwise) that limit the participation of youth in advocacy in Education, Employment, Engagement, Entrepreneurship and Health such as
  • inequality,
  • inadequate skills (digital & otherwise),
  • little or inadequate access to quality education particularly for the girl child in Africa,
  • little or inadequate access to quality health systems,
  • consistent strike actions in higher institutions and it's effects on youth (knowing how it can hinder participation of youth in advocacy),
  • little or inadequate access to technology (digital equipment and internet),
  • little or inadequate access to power,
  • street children or youth in Africa (knowing how this limits participation in Advocacy),
  • youth living with disability, and insecurity affecting youth.

We will also focus on yearly Conferences connected to education, employment, entrepreneurship, engagement and health happening in all the participating countries and Africa at large such as African Youth SDGs Summit, Africa Climate Week etc as well as policies, statements and declarations produced as a result of those conferences in all the participating countries and Africa at large.

Core Organizing Team

• Euphemia Uwandu
• Douglas Ssebaggala
• Francesc Fort
• James Popoola
• Eben Mlay
• M. Rafiul Bahar Rafi
• Ceslause Ogbonnaya

Partners

• Africa Knowledge Initiative
• Wikimedia Foundation
• African Union
• Africa No Filter